IT Movie Adaptation Official Runtime Confirmed

The official runtime for the upcoming film adaptation of Stephen King’s IT has been revealed ahead of the movie’s theatrical premiere in September. When it comes to the most beloved novels written by horror master King, IT is no doubt at or near the top of the list. However, in addition to being great, IT is also quite the door-stopper, clocking in at over 1100 pages. In fact, it’s one of his longest books, and for a writer as famously verbose as King, that’s saying something.

Naturally, when translating IT to the film medium, there’s no realistic way to adapt the entire book. To be fair though, there are certain sequences that even most fans would suggest remain only on the page. The 1990 IT miniseries starring Tim Curry, ran for just over 3 hours sans commercials, and was still forced to boil the story down to its core components. Fans of the book will know that the mythology behind the titular monster is deserving of the word epic, and many chapters center on or are told from the POV of non-Losers Club’ characters.

While nobody really expected director Andy Muschetti’s upcoming 2-film re-adaptation of IT to be able to include all the cool bits that the miniseries left out, there has definitely been hope among fans that this new R-rated theatrical take would end up more faithful to King’s novel than was the content restricted miniseries. Today brings news that points in the direction of that hope being realized, as the BBFC has revealed the official runtime for this fall’s IT part 1: 2 hours and 15 minutes.

For those keeping score, that’s 45 minutes longer than the first half of the miniseries, which primarily told the story of the child Losers versus Curry’s Pennywise. It’s hard to imagine ITpart 2 clocking in a shorter runtime than part 1, so with that in mind, fans are likely to receive at least 4 hours and 30 minutes of story. That’s the entire runtime of the miniseries, plus the equivalent of another entire film.

While the trailers have already revealed scenes that aren’t taken straight from the book, Muschetti definitely has the opportunity to translate much more of King’s prose to the screen, due to working within such a longer time frame than director Tommy Lee Wallace had in 1990. Here’s hoping that IT fans finally get the faithful adaptation that they’ve been wanting for so long.